Hit by icy rain and freezing temperatures, regions in China’s southwest, such as Hunan, Guangxi and Guizhou Provinces, have declared a state of emergency. Schools in the worst-hit areas have suspended classes, closed, postponed final exams, or begun the winter vacation earlier than usual. However, because roads leading to schools in several mountainous villages in Quanzhou County of Guangxi Province are deemed passable, schoolchildren insist on going to school. With parents and teachers’ company, elementary school students hit the mountain road in the cold weather and walk to the schools. Some students cover a total distance of 30 kilometers (18 miles) on foot each day. Kids brave the elements and endure hardships in their pursuit of knowledge.

In Guizhou Province and Chongqing, schoolchildren have to take homemade portable stoves to stay warm in classrooms with no heating supply. Most stoves were made from paint pails, waste basins and kitchen utensils and filled with charcoals. In class, they place the stoves besides them or right under their seats. After class, they carry the stoves home.

At noon, children sit together around stoves and eat lunch.

Children hold handmade stoves in their hands while walking on the icy mountain road.

In Wulong County, Chongqing, third graders Shu Min (left) and Dou Qiuju walk on their way to school.

Many netizens reminisce about their childhood when resources were scanty and living conditions were as poor. They criticize the regime for not doing enough to ensure rural kids a good living environment and making them go through the same suffering despite the country’s economic leap.

Poor kids. If you want to regret, go ahead regrettiing having been born in a country like China. So work hard for going abroad in the future. Loving this country and staying for it is not worthwhile any more.

Decades have passed. Why the classrooms are still that shitty? Isn’t China progressing? One meal of officials can cost tens of thousands of yuan. Why just can’t they take out some money and build a nicer school and a nicer road? And they chant the slogan “However painful life is, we can’t let children feel the pain; how poor we are, we can’t have a poor education.” Pure f**king bullshit.

China’s money should be invested in poverty-stricken regions and used for building roads and funding education to shore up the economy. This way the gap between the rich and the poor can be effectively prevented from going wider. (China) should not channel the money abroad, let along buying billions of dollars of the U.S. treasury bonds.

On the road to school the world is icy and snowy;
The bumpy path in the mountains was covered with frost.
You ask us why we still go to class?
For shaking off poverty, achieving prosperity, we need good education.

Did they replace all the desks and chairs with new ones just for a better picture(Jing’s note: referring to 05.jpg)? Windows that cannot close tight, kids’ hands that are red from the coldness. My heart is broken by this scene.